


when i’m with you

by bratwiththeglasses



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: First Crush, First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29216574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratwiththeglasses/pseuds/bratwiththeglasses
Summary: i listened to thisBEST COASTsong nonstop while writing. it sets the vibe.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki
Comments: 37
Kudos: 397





	1. the world is lazy.

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to this [BEST COAST](https://youtu.be/nN1XzxOQWrA) song nonstop while writing. it sets the vibe.

-

Reki’s head tilts to the left subconsciously at the sound of Langa’s name. It’s not an uncommon occurrence, hearing his friend’s name whispered amongst the masses, and it’s become something of a habit to tune in whenever _Langa_ or _Prince_ filters through the mundane, busy sounds of the school hallways.

It only takes him a moment, a few careful zig zags around zombie-paced classmates, to locate the source of the gossip. Reki’s smile blooms. He recognizes two girls from the year below him, they’re nice. He isnt mad about it and really, how could he be? It’s no secret that half the school simultaneously fell in love with Langa the second he stepped foot on campus.

Reki understands objectively; Langa is the most interesting person he’s ever met in his young life.

But Reki also has eyes, and well, looking at Langa has absolutely _never_ been a burden. Even when it doesn’t involve skateboarding. Though, admittedly, that is when it’s best.

Momentarily hazy with thoughts of blue, Reki almost walks into a pole. He jumps and shouts a few apologizes over his shoulders at nothing before refocusing. He catches up with the girls and tunes in once more.

“--impossible that he’s never kissed a girl before! I bet he’s had plenty of girlfriends.”

Reki thinks that’s probably true but can’t be sure. Neither of them have ever breached the topic of _girls_ or kissing or any of the stereotypical subjects he overhears half his hormonal peers discuss on a daily basis.

He considers his teenage normality as he trails through the hallways but concludes it's nothing detrimental. He’s never been normal and Reki doesn’t feel like he’s missing out. It's a simple fact that skateboarding is, and has always, been his primary focus. There’s nothing else to it. He knows he feels attraction and he definitely has sexual desire--there’s been way more mornings than he’d care to admit lately that require extra minutes in the shower-- but things like crushes? Going on dates?

He’d rather be skating, or talking about skating, or watching videos about it, or making boards or talking about making boards. The desire is endless and…

More importantly, though he can’t figure out why, is that all of those things he’d most definitely rather be doing with Langa.

Reki squints, his chin rising to meet the sky as the building doors open, leading him outside. The girls are gone. He covers the glare from the sun with an open palm, eyes searching. Langa, haloed in sunbeams, waves him over from where the grass starts near the sidewalk. He’s already changed into his work polo, skateboard lazily rolling side to side as he sits on it, making shallow dents in the soft soil.

It’s unnecessary but Reki waves back, dropping his skateboard from where it’s been tucked under his arm. The sound of the wheels against gravel is comforting and so is Langa’s smile.

They skate off together and Reki suffers through intrusive thoughts about kissing and girlfriends and Canada until he eats it on a broken curb and Langa’s laugh reminds him that none of that needs to matter.

-

“Langa,” Oka, their manager, calls over bemusedly, “they were totally flirting with you, you know.”

Langa doesn’t look up from where he’s placing coins into the register. He shrugs.

“Huh?” Reki interjects despite having been fully zoned out sweeping the floor. “Who?” He twists to catch them at the door but whoever they’re discussing has already come and gone.

“You should have asked for a number.”

Reki looks from Oka over to Langa, then back again. Langa just laughs and shuts the register with a soft click.

“Was she cute?” Reki asks.

“Dude,” Oka sighs.

“What?” Reki whines, confused. His eyes flit from Oka to Langa again.

Their eyes connect, blue burning into brown, and Langa changes the subject. “You want to go on break?”

Reki shakes his head. “You can go first.”

“Hm.”

Oka is muttering to himself about _wasted potential_ but Langa interrupts by asking if it’s cool for him and Reki to go on their break at the same time. It’s slow enough tonight that they get the OK.

Outside, it’s warmer than it should be for the time of year. Langa offers to buy them cold coffees from the vending machine and Reki spends the two minute walk there and back discussing alterations he’s considering for Langa’s skateboard. It’s what he’d been thinking about while sweeping, having inspired himself somehow.

He’s about to impress the hell out of Langa with a demonstration but he’s too overzealous when he grabs his board from inside, kicking his can of coffee on the way over. It skirts across the gravel and bounces back from the fence nearby.

“Noooo,” he cries out, dramatic. He jogs over to it and accidentally grabs it upside down. Whatever is left trickles down his pant leg and over his shoe. “Shit, this is my favorite kind too.”

Langa waves him over and Reki flops down beside him on the ground, leaning back on his palms in defeat.

“I don’t have any more change on me,” Langa tells him.

Reki shrugs. “It’s cool.”

“Hang on, one sec,” Langa says, knocking their knees together. Reki subconsciously runs his fingers over where they had been momentarily connected then turns his gaze to watch as Langa opens the coffee tab with his teeth, pulling a few drags of liquid from it. Reki watches closely as the curves of Langa’s neck and throat fluctuate with each swallow. It’s _really_ warm outside, he thinks again as Langa’s lips smack together. Before Reki can process another thought, Langa presses the can to his chest. “You can have the rest of mine.”

“Yeah? Thanks!” Reki doesn’t feel any hesitation until after he’s already downed all of the liquid left in the can. He licks the milky, bittersweetness left on his lips and suddenly remembers the conversation he’d heard in the hallway after school.

Sure, Langa might have kissed plenty of people but Reki sure hasn’t. And this, it’s not quite kissing but— “Indirect kiss,” he says, thinking out loud.

“What?”

Reki meets Langa with wide eyes. He licks his lips again, unsure why he feels embarrassed but he’s never been inclined to hide what’s on his mind (even when he should) so he elaborates.

“Oh. Sharing drinks and like, chapstick or whatever. It’s a form of indirect kissing. That’s all.”

“O-kay,” Langa replies but it doesn’t sound judgmental, just tense. Reki reminds himself that they never discuss things like this. But then Langa smiles, tension gone. “Was I supposed to take you out to dinner first before I offered to share my drink?”

Reki laughs, full bodied and loud. It echoes down the quieting street that’s normally busy with cars. “Hell yeah. I deserve to be wine’d and dine’d.”

Langa’s laugh is softer and he catches his breath before he explains, “Well, in my defense, I did pay for your onigiri before school and the coffee you just destroyed so…”

“Yeah, yeah. Alright,” Reki says with a hand thrown up, surrendering. “Imma cheap date.”

It’s quiet for a full minute, Reki still fighting not to think about things like dates and kissing and girlfriends in Canada, so he fills the space with the aggressive crunch of the empty can under his shoe.

But the sudden break of silence jolts him into asking, “Have you had a lot of kisses?”

Langa is looking at him and Reki tries to recall if he’d noticed Langa actually looking away from him. He can’t remember.

“A lot of indirect kisses?” Langa’s voice sounds light, teasing.

Reki shakes his head. “Normal kisses.”

Langa hums thoughtfully. “What constitutes a ‘normal kiss’? Like, between—”

Reki assumes it’s his strange nervousness that makes him interrupt. “Just—you know! Whatever! A real kiss. Lips and mouths and tongues and teeth. Two people smashing faces.”

“Sounds like a horror movie.”

Reki shoves him with his elbow. “I haven’t kissed a ton of people, okay.”

“I sure hope not if that’s what you plan on doing.”

Reki tries not to but he feels his mouth pull downward, eyebrows shifting together. Something about the joke makes him feel ashamed but not because of his lack of experience. Langa is too perceptive to miss the change in his expression and he leans forward, knocking their knees together once again.

“Sorry, bad joke. I haven’t kissed a ton of people either. Just a few.”

It hardly makes Reki feel better. It’s quiet again. Their break is almost over, he’s sure. He moves to stand up, offering a hand out to Langa once does.

Langa accepts and their fingers are still touching when he asks, “Why do you want to know?”

Reki isn’t sure what the best response is. It’s probably too bold, even for him, to confess that he hasn’t stopped thinking about his best friend’s lip-history for literal hours but it also feels wrong to avoid the truth.

“The girls at school are worried you have a bunch of Canadian girlfriends you might’ve left behind,” Reki answers, deciding on friendly taunting. It feels safe, since Langa rarely believes the gossip he usually shares with him. Or maybe he just doesn’t care — Reki can never tell.

“Tch,” Langa breathes through his teeth. Reki opens the back door to the shop but hesitates when he remembers the cans outside. He turns to grab them from the ground and Langa only holds the door open long enough to share, “I’ve never kissed a girl,” before the door closes behind him.


	2. we’re just crazy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday, Langa!

-

Langa offers to skate with Reki back to his house after work. It’s a temporary reprieve from the endless thoughts of kissing and _boys_ and Langa’s mouth, Langa’s tongue, and _Langa._ They take the scenic route because Reki always wants to skate just a little longer and because the sound of wood scraping metal when he railsides the stairs at the park near his house makes the buzzing in his head dull.

They catch their breath on Reki’s tiny porch and the orange glow from the streetlight in the distance makes Langa’s hair a shade darker. Reki falls back in defeat, laid out on the pavement. He throws an elbow over his eyes.

Static flares behind his eyelids and he forms the shape of Langa in the waves of color.

Thinking about Langa is nothing new -- he is always thinking about him, always has since they met. Reki just doesn’t understand how in a matter of hours the thoughts have gone from skateboarding with Langa to...

“You’re not like, weird about it, right?”

“Huh?” Reki asks from under his elbow. “Weird about what?”

Langa sighs. “The kissing thing,” he explains as if Reki hasn’t spent the entire goddamn day thinking about exactly that.

He peeks an eye out and watches Langa’s tense shoulders, following his fingers as they tuck a piece of blue hair behind an ear. It falls against his neck instantly, stubborn. Reki would like to touch his hair and wonders if anyone else has. “Oh.”

Langa looks over his shoulder at him and Reki contemplates his expression. He looks worried, almost regretful. Scared.

“No way,” Reki says quickly, waving an arm out in front of him. “Why would it be weird that you have kissing experience? We’re seventeen. I mean. That’s like, normal.”

“No—” Langa starts, twisting his torso so that he’s almost fully facing Reki. He seems to get caught up on his thought, cheeks blushing pink before sputtering out a laugh. It sounds endeared, almost relieved. “No, I meant about kissing _guys_ , Reki.”

Reki, confused, sits up. He rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward to look at Langa sideways. Maybe he’ll make more sense that way.

“You can kiss whoever you want, Langa! I don’t care.” Except, saying it feels like a lie; He does care who Langa kisses but mostly because...Reki scrunches his nose when understanding floods him.

A freshly bloomed hope spreads through his gut that _maybe_ Langa will want to kiss him.

They both inhale and exhale deeply together, Langa watching as a car drives past and Reki watching him. The headlights turn Langa’s eyes gray, his hair nearly white. Reki has never fantasized about kissing someone like this, so thoroughly, filled with teenage desperation.

He blinks away the ache but the thoughts persist. He can’t take his eyes off Langa. It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Why are you staring at me?” he asks, even though he’s still not looking at Reki. His cheeks are tinged pink semi-permanently today it seems.

Reki doesn’t answer. Just forces himself to turn away with a muffled apology that he breathes into his arms as he rests his chin on his knees.

It’s quiet for too long and Reki’s mom ends up bursting through the front door. She bullies Langa into staying for dinner even though Reki knows he probably would rather be home with his own mother.

“I’m not ready to go home yet,” Langa tells him over the table when Reki apologizes for his family’s insistence. Something in the tone of Langa’s voice makes Reki’s chest feel tight, his palms sweating enough he has to wipe them over his jeans.

-

Before Langa, it had been a long time since Reki had a friend in his bedroom.

But like everything in Reki’s life, Langa easily integrates himself into his space. The messy bed, the posters on the wall. He stands out but doesn’t look out of place. Reki’s attention is pulled toward him like he has his own gravitational pull.

They’re hunched together on his bed, watching one of Reki’s favorite skating compilations on youtube.

“You’re doing it again,” Langa comments without looking away from Reki’s phone screen. He finally turns and their chins are only a few inches apart. “Is there something on my face or what.”

It takes too much effort to think of excuses and Reki feels uncomfortably guilty for every thought he’s carried on his shoulders today. Being honest is so much better, even if embarrassing.

“I can’t stop thinking about kissing.”

Langa opens his mouth immediately but whatever he was planning to say is dead on arrival. Instead he clears his throat, taking a moment to reevaluate. He scratches his fingers through his hair and decides on, “Have you kissed anyone before, Reki?”

He has. “Just once--in primary school.” So it hardly counts, in his opinion. He recalls the memory out loud so there’s sound to fill the tense silence that's overcome the room. “A girl in my class confessed one day and just sort of—” he isn’t sure how to put it. He shrugs, “—Laid one on me.”

Langa laughs and Reki makes a face, sticking his tongue out and knocks a knee against him. “Sorry, sorry,” Langa apologizes in English, his subtle accent filtering through the words. “Go on.”

“Anyway,” Reki laughs, cheeks warm. “It was just… wet and uncomfortable. I hated it.”

“Do you like girls?” Langa asks curiously, his eyes forward once again.

Reki nods, “Sure.” At seventeen years old, he’s plenty familiar with the desires of his own body. And there had never been much to question; anytime spent alone with himself is more or less just a vague fantasy of sexual acts. Faceless, even genderless sometimes, but not always. To want and be wanted is what compels him, arouses him. “But I figured that kissing just wasn’t something I was into.”

“That makes sense. ”

Reki doesn’t want Langa to get the wrong idea so he amends, “That’s what I thought before, I mean.”

Langa scrapes a hand through his hair again and asks exactly what Reki hopes he will. “Before what?”

“Before I overheard the girls talking about _you_.”

Langa looks over to meet his eyes but Reki can’t help but stare at his mouth. At lips fuller than his own, their shade a paler pink over his own. Langa’s front teeth peek from under his top lip while the bottom hangs open, just enough for the redness of his tongue and wetness of his inner mouth to gleam through. Reki swallows, tongue swiping over his own lips, suddenly dry. He thinks he’s going to have to ask, to speak directly about what he wants, verbalize it himself because how can he keep any of this quiet any longer than he already has?

Reki’s heart feels like it’s going to burst from his chest, his stomach burning hotter than ever before. But then--

“Do you want to kiss me, Reki?”

An embarrassingly loud exhale falls out of him, relief, excitement, thrill. “Oh shit, _yes!_ ” His cheeks burn and he shifts, waving his hands in front of him wildly when he hears the neediness in his own voice. “I-I mean! Uh, only if you want to kiss me back.”

Langa’s soft laugh is warm to the touch, a rush of breath against Reki’s skin that fills the small gap between them. It sounds obvious when he answers, “I do.”

“Because I’m a boy and you like kissing boys?”

Langa shakes his head, his answer easy, like a simple truth that Reki isn’t allowed to deny. “Don’t be stupid. Because it’s you.”

-

“What do I do with my hands?”

Langa’s eyes are like burning ice as they drop down over Reki’s body to where his palms are turned upward. “Whatever feels right to you.” He looks back up and there’s a small smile curved at the corner of his mouth. He sounds slightly impatient but then again Reki has asked him no less than fifteen questions, at least.

Reki nods like he’s listening to an instructional video. “Okay. Got it.”

Langa chuckles with a gentle shake of his head. “So, can I kiss you now?”

“Wait, let me just--” Reki pulls down his headband so he can situate it more firmly with his hair out of his face but when he moves to pull it back up, Langa stops him by the wrist.

“Leave it.”

“Dude, my hair will get everywhere.”

Langa stares at him hard and assertive and before Reki can argue, Langa pushes both of his hands against his temples. He gathers handfuls of red in each grip. Reki gasps, his skin electric, a chill running down his spine at the sudden tug against his scalp.

“I’ll take care of it,” Langa says and Reki can’t think, can’t even breathe when Langa moves in. Their noses touch, the smell of Langa’s open mouth filling his lungs as Reki tries to gather enough oxygen to keep steady. “Now?”

“Now,” Reki agrees and pushes their mouths together to initiate their first kiss.

Reki’s bed bumps against the wall gently when they both move, bodies turning toward one another. Reki reaches out to steady himself on one arm while his other springs forward, fist gripping a handful of Langa’s shirt that bunches at his waist.

An amalgamation of thoughts and sensations take over Reki’s body. It’s hard to think in fully formed sentences, but his brain tracks details as they race through him; The softness of Langa’s mouth, the wet slide of his lips, then his warm tongue, the way heat pools in his lower belly and between his legs, the sounds Langa keeps making against his mouth.

Langa shifts again, tilting his head in the opposite direction. The kiss grows deeper, hotter. Reki thinks _sexy_ and it feels silly but accurate. He also thinks he can’t breathe but he’s panting, air moving between them. Salvia too.

He dares to open his eyes and burning colors overwhelm him. Blue and red all over.

“Slow down,” Langa tells him, pulling back to lick over his bottom lip. Reki feels hazy and heated, dopey when he opens his eyes again to see Langa smiling. He realizes he’s smiling too, his cheeks aching. He feels shy and turned on. “You bit me,” Langa says with a soft exhale of amusement.

Their breath smells like one another.

“M’sorry,” Reki mumbles, eyes falling closed once as he leans back in for more. He doesn’t imagine he’ll ever want to stop.

He gets it now, what the big deal is, why everyone is obsessed with it. It’s nothing like he could’ve imagined. He puts his hands in Langa’s hair and all he can think now is, “More, yeah?”

Langa is still smiling when he presses their mouths together again.

**Author's Note:**

> comments && stuff are pretty cool. you can also bug me at creepyx on tumblr to yell about sk8 stuff.


End file.
